No wanking on board

A few weeks ago I came across the photo below of a poster that was part of a Queensland Rail campaign. My initial reaction was, Wow, those Australians and their edgy public transit ads! They did it again!

Then I got a little suspicious and started to look around for more details. It turns out that these are not real posters (surprise, surprise), but rather one of those meme* things from a public service outreach campaign that went awry.

Apparently, Queensland Rail put up an application where people could create custom etiquette posters and people did just that.

So, instead of posters about where to stand and where to place one's bag, they ended up with posters about public drunkenness, sexual deviancy, and other such unsavory or delay-inducing behavior.

A collection of the infamous Queensland Rail etiquette posters is here and another here (note: these are not for the easily offended). While many of these are repugnant and reflect racist, misogynist, homophobic, and other discriminatory attitudes, they are interesting as manifestations of social and cultural tensions. Some of them are about the unsavory things that do happen (or people think happen) on public transit, such as masturbating, passing gas, and drinking. Some are about societal insecurities around race, gender, religion, and ability/disability that are expressed by marking the Other through this anonymous medium. And, some just make no sense - the tampon in the trash one falling into this category.

*I never really understood how a meme was different from something that went viral, but here's what I learned from the site Know Your Meme (an impressive site "considered the most authoritative source on news, history and origins of viral phenomena and Internet memes" - it claims to have its own editorial and research staff):

An Internet meme is a piece of content or an idea that's passed from person to person, changing and evolving along the way. A piece of content that is passed from person to person, but does not evolve or change during the transmission process is considered viral content.

(thx Mike S!) (via Know Your Meme, Ranker, BuzzFeed)